Essay: Relationship between employee motivation and work performance

CHAPTER ONE
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
1. 1 Introduction
This chapter develops the background for establishing the relationship between employee motivation and work performance in private organizations in Tanzania. It discusses the background information, definition of the research problem and research questions, a statement of the problem, objectives, and significance. It provides an adequate description of various motivational and work performance texts. The researchers have organized the research as follows: Chapter 2 reviews the theoretical and empirical literature. Chapter 3 explains research method including research design, analytical techniques, data presentation and analysis. Chapter 4 presents the findings and Chapter 5 discussion and conclusion.
1.2 Background Information
Business conduct today worldwide is very challenging. Moreover, their performance in terms of returns growth is facing internal and external operating challenges. To survive in this tough operating environment to manage well all the factors of production, e.g. machine, materials and employees, and make employee to do well in a creative and pioneering way is imperative. However, among all these factors of business the workers form the biggest challenge because unlike other resources, employee management calls for accomplishing handling of thoughts, feelings and emotions to protected highest productivity and they are the ones who make the other factors to do well.. High productivity is a result of making employee highly motivated. The motivation for an employee is a valuable asset in providing value to the organization by maintaining and strengthening its business and retains growth. The paper studies the employee motivational impact on work performance of private organizations in Tanzania.
Competitiveness has become the norm in these challenging and turbulent times. Competitiveness is a company’s ability to keep up and gain market share in its industry. (Noe et al., 2010). Nowadays, more and more companies are starting to understand that the real engine of their competitiveness and profit-making machine are the employees, not the financial capital that they are trying to multiply through their everyday activities. Therefore, employees are being regarded as an unsurpassed vital resource of the organization. Among the steps taken by organizations to improve employees work performance is providing motivations to their employees (Appiah et al., 2013 and Nadeem et al., 2014).
The motivated employees are ready to devote fully their potential, creativity, abilities and know-how in support of the organization productivity, commitment and retention of the employees and boost work performances. A numberless of factors motivate people at work, some of which are a tangible, such as money, and some of which an intangible, such as a sense of achievement (Spector, 2003).
Although employees get satisfaction from their work or places of work for different reasons, therefore the researcher concerned specifically with an assessment of the impact of employee incentives, and relating to employees work performance. The primary pointed of departure is that the success of any company is heavily dependent on the inputs of its employees, personal characteristics and facets of people’s work environments. This in turn employes are being driven to invest more physical and mental energy into their work. In this way the organizations pursue and meet the set objectives. Motivation so regarded as key causes of organizational success or work performance.
The article published in the International Journal of Administration and Governance by Solehan et al. (2015) about the organization, employees and their work in different organizations. The articles, examined different questions about a drive to employees. Looking at the motivation perspective thousands of years before the word motivation is being used by managers; people realized workers stimulus influences carrying out tasks for an organization. In earlier times the oldest technique used to motivate others was known as ‘The Carrot and Stick method’. The name evolved from the stubbornness of donkeys that could only move by taunting them with a carrot. Early managers regularly offered economic “carrots” to entice people to work harder (Frey and Osterloh, 2002).
Generally the practice of involves a constellation of beliefs, perceptions, values, interests, and actions that are all closely related. As a result, various approaches to person spur can focus on cognitive behaviors such as monitoring and strategic use, non-cognitive aspects such as perceptions, beliefs, and attitudes.. In understanding motivation, effectiveness both approaches be considered (Gredler et al., 2004).Person motivation is concerned with how behavior gets started, energized, sustained, directed, stopped and what kind of subjective reaction is present in the organization while all this is going on’ (Gibson et al., 2004).
Motivation has become increasingly important for organizations and companies of all sizes that want to reach their organizational goals in a competitive marketplace. Top performers of an organization consistently offer high-quality work; support a high level of productivity and overcome obstacles or challenges. Helping all employees keep up a high level of incentives can help keep employees committed to work hard and contributing as much value as possible to the organization (Griffin, 2008).
Motivation could be increased with incentives, feedback, rewards programs and ensuring that the workplace meets basic needs and requirements for each employee. Common types of motivational strategies include: events that raise employee morale; training and education to help employees learn new skills and grow within their positions; recognition programs to highlight the hard work and reinforcing positive messages during company or team meetings (Kiragu and Mukandala, 2005).
Motivational tactics help improve employee performance, cut the chances of low employee morale, encourage teamwork and instill a positive attitude during challenging times (Kiragu and Mukandala, 2005). Employees with a high level of motivation typically work harder and can overcome common workplace challenges with ease; this help the organization reach its goals and improve overall business operations.
An organization that notice a significant decline in productivity, high employee turnover cannot reach its goals successfully may need to consider resorting to the role of incentives between its employees. Low motivation could cause a variety of negative events that affect the organization. Unmotivated staff members are at risk of resigning, delivering poor-quality work and even making it difficult for other employees to do their jobs efficiently (Linnenbrink and Pintrich, 2002).
Reducing the risk of low motivation among employees typically requires a strategic plan and mix of different activities and strategy that help improve employee morale. Companies that time invested and resources used toward improving their employees’ well-being and workplace experience can look forward to a high return on their investment as employees become more productive, support a positive attitude, commit to their roles and duties and keep up a strong work ethic.
Motivation is important for business because it’s the strong, driving force that can mean the difference between failure and success in business. In psychology, motivation refers to an individual’s wish to move toward a goal. Without a leader to offer direction, incentives and encouragement, employees may not know how to complete their day-to-day tasks (Pintrich, 2003).
Motivating employees often viewed as the difference between success and failure. Employees’ workplace is composed of people and if the same don’t work together in positive ways will never successes as a group at their place of work. Motivation is the ability to inspire and move people to action based on a belief, philosophy or goal (Pintrich, 2003). On the other hand incentives and job satisfaction among employees is directly affecting the foundation in every organization.
Pintrich’s framework holds that cognition and stimulus affect each other and academic achievement in turn affect the social context of learning (Pintrich, 2003). According to Kelly (1974) asserted that motivation as behavior is investigated by the needs and direction towards the goals that can satisfy the needs. This means that motivation is a need-oriented behavior directed towards the person and the group. When a person is motivated, he is in a state of tension free and this generates energy. Further, when a person is in a state of tension, he feels impelled to take an action. Therefore an individual’s perception influences his learning in a certain structured direction.
According to Singh (2004) performances of an individual is a function of his ability and willingness or want to use his ability in achieving people or organizational goals. This willingness or want to act and to behave is called motivation. Thus, a person may have the ability, but less motivated to use that ability in a desired direction. Motivation or lack of it gets manifested behavior from the employees.
In this case, the importance of workplace motivation is the key to build successful and positive employee relations. Therefore, it is necessary to know and learn the basic approaches to incentive that will enable managers to deal with each employee in a better way and ease the formulation of policies and practices which are motivational in nature and the needs of the employees.
Motivation to employees is given in the form of incentive system, which is a reward system given to employees for ideas, increased productivity and record sales. Special organizations offer packages, incentive schemes, particularly suitable for employee’s performance.
According to Malic et al., (2011) several incentive systems be devised to encourage and motivate employees be more productive. This goes back to 1914, when James Lincoln set the seeds of the famous incentive management program (Luthans, 1995) which made workers to increase productivity. There is every reason to give attributing to the growth of incentive management philosophy developed by Lincoln.
Financial incentives have become the most concern in today’s organization, as propagated by Maslow’s basic needs. Non-financial aspect only comes in when financial incentives have failed. However, some researchers have viewed non financial incentive as very essential for organizations to think and give this on employees for motivation purpose (Gibson et al. 2004.
Gibson et al. (2004) also argued that the most blatant form of pay for performance is the traditional piece rate plan, whereby the employee pays a specific amount of money for each unit of work. Today’s service economy is forcing management to creatively adopt greater emphasis on product and service quality, interdependence and teamwork. Roughly half the incentive plans don’t work, victims of poor design and administration
The person starts at the bottom of the pyramid and achieves the goals of the next layer working to the top sector. One is not able to move the next level of the pyramid until the needs of the first level meet.
According to Kreitner and Kinicki (2008) many incentive schemes do not do the best results in practice. Some schemes even have had unintended side effects by introducing them too quickly or with insufficient planning. Given the poor design of many existing incentive schemes, principles for the proper design of staff incentive schemes need to be developed.
1. 3 Problem statement
To perform organization and employee motivation has been the heart of serious research effort in recent times. How well an organization motivates its workers to meet their mission, vision and mandate is of dominant concern. Employees in both public and private sector organizations are facing increasingly aware that incentive increase productivity. From the foregoing, and looking at today’s economic trend, clearly the pace of change in our business environment presents fresh challenges daily. Every organization and business wish victorious and have desired to get constant progress. The current era is highly competitive and organizations, regardless of size, technology and market focus are facing employee retention challenges.
To overcome these challenges a strong and positive relationship and bonding be created and maintained between employees and their organizations. Human resource or employees of any organization are the most central part so they need influence and convinced towards tasks fulfillment. For achieving prosperity, organizations, design different tactics to compete with the competitors and for increasing organizational performance. A very few organizations believe that the human people and employees of any organization are its main assets which can lead them to success or if not focused well, to decline.
Researchers have done a countless of studies on employee motivation and work or job performance.. A study conducted by the Sheffield Effectiveness Program between 1991 and 1998 has shown that, the way people managed has a powerful impact on both productivity and profitability, Schofield (1998). The study, which included measurement of levels of job satisfaction and organizational commitment of employees of 67 firms, found that five percent of the profitability variance, and 16 percent of the productivity variance among companies be attributed to correspond variance in job satisfaction levels among their employees (Wanda Roos, 2005).
As the global and local organizational competitiveness increases, it is crucial for any organization, and particularly for those in developing countries with limited skills, resources, like Tanzania, to make sure that it develops and retains workers who are loyal, dedicated, committed and able workforce. A satisfied employee viewed as motivated and loyal, dedicated, committed and able to work for the interest of the employer and continue their relationship with that employer. A great many employees all over the world if they don’t enjoy this level of work spur, they often opt for seeking alternative employment where they are able to experience a higher degree of incentives. Such actions have an adverse effect on a company’s ability to profitable and successfully over an extended period. (Fink, Timmers and Mennes 1998) emphasized that only when employees excited and motivated by what they do, will business excellence achieved.
Most of researches works about employees’ motivation had been conducted in public organizations and proved relationship between motivation of employees and their work performances (Mkisi, 2008 and Appiah et al. 2013. Little is known about the impact of motivation in an employee’s performance in private sector organizations in Tanzania as many studies have been unable to distinguish it from the public sector. Private sector led to modern economies. Good performance of private sector organizations has great influence on the national economy. Thus, this study did assess the motivational impact on the work performance of private sector organizations in Tanzania taking employees of VRM as a case study.
1. 4 General Objective of the Study
The general aim of the study is to assess the impact of employee motivation on work performance in private organizations.
1.4.1 Specific Objective
i).To look at how work itself and the environment can motivate an employee and enhance organizational performance
ii).To find out the impact of employee recognition and empowerment on motivation and promote organization performance
iii).To investigate the outcome of employee pay and benefits on motivation in boosting organization performance
1.5 General Research Question
What is the impact of the employees’ motivation on work performance in private organizations in Tanzania?
1.5.1 Specific Questions
i). Can work itself and working environment motivate an employee and improve organizational performance?
ii). Does recognition and empowering employees have an effect on motivation and later organization performance?
iii).. What is the impact of pay and benefits to employee motivation and organizational performance?
1.6 Significance of the Study
The study would be of immense benefit to the Venture Risk Management, managers and its Board of directors. Bodies and other stakeholders in that it will highlight how the concept of motivation and job performance valued and understood and pay attention to a variety of issues for employees.
Furthermore, the study will bring to light the different forms of incentives which will facilitate the design of proper measures for bringing the best employees to job performance. Again, the factors leading to high performance as well as causes of low performance will tell management and policy makers in their decision- making. Administrators will help to use incentives not just for the sake of it, but, to know how, when, what type of incentive to use to maximize performance of staff.
Also, the findings would create effective managerial tactics and policies that can help in improving the administration and realization of organizational goals. The findings of this study should engender ideas that can lead to provide quality service delivery at VRM.
1.7 Chapter Summary
This chapter has provided a brief introduction to, and overview of the research study. The context and rationale of the study a set, and define the constructs at hand by reference to the literature. It also presents many of the most wells-known and authoritative literature of motivation and work performance and conceptualized these within their historical development of motivational theories, along with the many perspectives on job satisfaction, work performance or job performance or organizational effectiveness. The chapter ended by describing the goals and significance of the study. The next chapter presents an overview of the literature about the relationships of motivation and job or work performance.